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Omelette, Savoury

A quick egg dish cooked with herbs, parsley, garlic or shallot, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Omelette, Savoury

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Whisk the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, herbs, salt, and pepper.

  3. Rub the omelette pan with the garlic or shallot.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in the pan over medium heat.

  2. When hot, pour in the egg mixture and stir until it begins to set.

  3. When cooked to a creamy consistency, fold the omelette into an oval shape.

  4. Serve immediately.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into the structure of the omelette as they cook, giving it body and tenderness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and keeps the eggs from sticking to the pan.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, green aroma and flavour to the egg mixture.

The step that matters

Stir until it begins to set, then stop cooking at a creamy consistency. Egg proteins coagulate with heat, so stirring over medium heat keeps curds small and tender. Cooking past creamy makes the eggs firm, dry, and rubbery, and residual heat keeps cooking them after the pan.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, parsley, butter, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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